Brass Ring (35 page)

“Call me anytime, Jon,” she said. “You’ve never lived alone before. Call me. I’m an expert at it.”

He took her advice about telling the other foundation personnel, and by the time he’d left the office for the day, he had spoken to all eight full-time employees. He tried not to paint too black a picture of Claire. He tried to share responsibility for what had happened. At some point, he hoped they would be working with Claire again.

Their reactions amazed him. There was that initial sense of shock and sympathy, which he’d expected, followed by a perverse sort of relief, which he hadn’t. “The team of Harte-Mathias is human after all,” one of the physical therapists said.

After work, he went to the gym and spent nearly two hours working out, putting off the time he’d have to go home to his empty house. Changing his clothes in the locker room afterward, he forced himself to study the burn on his foot. There was no denying that it was worse. The blisters were oozing now. Ignoring the burn didn’t appear to be the treatment of choice. He would have to take himself to the emergency room after all.

Driving toward the hospital, he felt like an abandoned child attempting to take care of himself without a grown-up around. Over the years, he’d had to go to the hospital numerous times, but always with Claire at his side. This felt like his first act as an adult.

He turned the car into the parking lot of the hospital, heart thumping. What would he say when they shook their heads at him and asked why he’d waited so long to come in? He practiced his response as he pulled into a handicapped-parking space. “I didn’t think it looked that bad.” Or, “It seemed to be getting better on its own.” Or perhaps he would just tell them the truth: “It’s easy to ignore a problem when there isn’t any pain.”

BILLY GOAT TRAIL, MARYLAND

CLAIRE WAS GLAD SHE’D
worn her hiking boots. Randy had warned her that the Billy Goat Trail would live up to its name, but she hadn’t expected the entire two miles to be made up of rocks.

“Are you coming?” Randy teased from his perch on a boulder high above her. She looked up at him, winded. He and Cary hiked this trail at least once a month. She was at a severe disadvantage.

Claire studied the network of rocks between herself and Randy and started picking her way up to him. Once she’d reached him, they began walking and jumping over a long string of boulders. They moved quietly, occasionally stopping to look across the Potomac River to the Virginia side, where barely detectable rock climbers nudged their way up the cliffs near Great Falls.

It had been two weeks since she’d moved out of her house, and her life had slipped into a pattern. She slept in Randy’s guest room more nights than she probably should, although she was careful to wait for his invitation. He seemed to want her there. They were intensely close in all ways but one, and she worried that she was keeping him from developing a more gratifying social life. He made light of her concern. There was a new, boyish happiness in him she hadn’t noticed before. He was still protective of his privacy and his time with his son, though. That was fine. She could keep busy. She spent her days either helping him in the restaurant or painting

scenery for the upcoming play at the little theater. Often she was alone in the chapel, working on the huge canvas flats. The painting offered her the long, quiet days she seemed to need so badly. She was grateful to Jon for freeing her from the foundation. She would have been useless in the office, and there was no way she could have allowed herself this time with Randy if she were seeing Jon every day.

She did talk to him, though. She called him every few days to see how he was doing. He would ask if she was having any more flashbacks, and she would give him a brief response. She figured his questions were borne primarily of politeness. Or perhaps he was simply looking for something to say.

They had discussed how to tell Susan about the separation. Claire couldn’t get used to that word.

“Couldn’t we just say we’re living apart?” she asked him.

“I believe that’s the definition of a separation, Claire,” Jon had replied dryly.

They could come to no agreement on who should tell or what words should be used. Susan would be home for spring break in a few weeks, so they would have to decide how the telling should be done before then.

“Tell her the truth,” Randy said to her more than once, but Claire would still lie awake at night, trying to think of how she could possibly make her daughter understand what was going on.

She had failed in that attempt with Amelia. She’d had lunch with Amelia last week, and it hadn’t gone well. Amelia didn’t understand what Claire couldn’t explain. She had merely picked at her food as she listened to Claire talk about Jon, about Randy, about the flashbacks the incident on the bridge had jarred loose in her. Occasionally, Amelia’s eyes filled with tears, but then suddenly, she would lash out, dry-eyed, fuming with anger. “You’ve always taken Jon for granted,” she’d say, or “I don’t even know you anymore,” and Claire decided she wouldn’t see her old friend again for a while.

Ironically, she found her greatest support in Debra Parlow. She had canceled her second appointment with the therapist but forced herself to go to the third. Debra reassured her that she didn’t have to talk about the flashbacks if she didn’t want to.

She encouraged Claire to talk about Jon and Randy, though, and Claire struggled to make sense of the situation to the therapist.

“Why is it you can talk so easily with Randy?” Debra asked.

“I don’t know. But I felt that way right from the start, as though I’d known him forever.”

“Does he remind you of someone else you know? Someone you feel that secure around?”

Claire thought for a moment, then shook her head.

“Well,” Debra said. “I think you’re brave to be trying to figure out what’s disturbing you, when it’s obviously so uncomfortable for you. And you’re right to do it, any way you can. You have to take care of yourself right now. You won’t be of much use to anyone else until you’ve done that.”

Claire certainly was not without guilt, but it was faint and transitory. She didn’t wallow in it. She was not without fear, either. She had no idea where she was going—not in her life, nor in the perilous unraveling of her memories. For once she was looking at what lay behind her and not at what was ahead. She continued to wonder if she might be fabricating the wispy fragments of memory. She spent an afternoon in the library, reading about “false memory syndrome.” Given some prompting, people could make up images and flashbacks and highly detailed memories that even they believed actually occurred. Was that what she was doing? The theory offered her some relief. “It’s just my overactive imagination,” she announced to Randy one night, and Randy started humming “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” making her stomach leap into her throat.

If she were merely inventing the flashbacks, then she could choose their content, couldn’t she? She could choose when and where they would occur. But she had no control over them, and although she certainly didn’t welcome the strange, sometimes scary images, she no longer ran from them. She was not alone with them anymore. Randy was never more than a phone call away, and the safety she felt with him astonished her. He had no fear of anything she might tell him. Unlike Jon. Jon had quaked under the weight of the small and senseless scraps of memory. She could never have gone through this while living with him. His suffering would have been worse than her own.

She was remembering much, much more from her childhood. She could now recall nearly all her elementary-school teachers and could even remember a handful of kids from her kindergarten class. Occasionally, a memory would come to her full-blown and highly detailed. None of them seemed very important, yet Randy treated each one like a milestone.

The only image she refused to pursue was the most tenacious—the smear of blood on white porcelain. Each time it occurred, she would back away from it, and the picture in her mind would put up a good fight before fading to black.

The images were expanding and multiplying, often prompted by Randy’s relentless questioning. He was tireless, as though he’d taken her on as a project. But when he hugged her good-night, when he kissed her forehead tenderly in the morning, Claire knew she meant far more to him than a mere puzzle to be solved.

The trail suddenly grew rough and craggy, and Claire had to give it all her concentration. She and Randy rounded a bend, losing sight of the cliffs across the river. With a burst of energy, Claire raced up the side of a rock and waited there for her hiking partner. Randy pulled himself onto the ridge a few seconds later, and they stood looking out over the river as they labored to catch their breath.

“You’re doing pretty well,” Randy said, slapping her lightly on the back. “I know you haven’t had much of a chance to hike in the past twenty years.”

Claire shook her head. She knew Randy liked to feel as though he was giving her things Jon couldn’t. “I didn’t hike before I met Jon, either,” she said. “Although, during the summers when I was a kid, Vanessa and I would go for long walks through the forest with our grandfather. He’d teach us how to mark the trail. Which is impossible up here.” She turned away from the river. Boulders as far as she could see. Not a twig in sight. “I sure hope you know where we’re going.”

Randy leaped to an adjacent rock, and she followed. “So your grandfather was a woodsman,” he said.

“He knew everything about the forest.” She was picturing the lush green of the woods in Jeremy. The plants that seemed magical when described by her grandfather. Jack-in-the-pulpits. She could remember the comical name but not what they looked like. “Do you know what a jack—” She stopped walking suddenly as an image appeared in her head. “We found a cross in the woods one day,” she said. “A grave.”

Randy looked at her quizzically. “Whose?”

“Tucker’s.” She could see the name painted in white. “My grandparents’ dog. Only that doesn’t make sense, because…” She had the quick realization that none of this memory would make sense. Too hazy. Unimportant. “It probably doesn’t matter.” She started walking again, but Randy caught her arm.

“Whoa,” he said. “I want to hear more. Why doesn’t it make sense?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. Except that Grandpa wasn’t with us that day. I don’t think we were supposed to know the grave was there.”

“Sit.” Randy pointed to the ground and sat down right where he’d been standing, on the smooth rounded rim of a boulder. Claire sat next to him. The cold stone bit through the denim of her jeans.

Randy put an arm around her. “Okay. So you found this grave, you and Vanessa. How did you know it was your grandparents’ dog?”

“His name was on it. But see…” The memory was very foggy, and she struggled to bring it into focus. “My mother had told us that my grandparents had given the dog away.”

“You mean she lied.”

“Well, yes, to protect us. As usual. We were really small.”

“Right.” Randy’s voice was cynical. “Cary’s pet fish died when Cary was six and we talked about it and had a funeral, and Cary cried and said a prayer over the grave. I can’t help but think that was a much healthier way to teach a child about death than if I’d lied to him about it.”

“Of course you’re right,” Claire agreed. “My mother’s intentions were good. Except that she told me that no one in our family was ever buried.” She frowned, remembering the mixture of fear and sympathy she’d felt when she’d talk about death with other children. “For the longest time, I thought my family was different. In a good way. Special. I felt sorry for other kids. Their dead relatives had to lay in the ground. Mine would go to heaven. I don’t remember how old I was before I realized that my family wasn’t charmed.”

Randy gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Your mother didn’t prepare you well for growing up.”

“I’m sure she thought she was doing the right thing.”

“Was your father the same way?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What was their marriage like?”

“It was good.” She felt the weakness in the word and braced herself for Randy’s inevitable retort.

“Then why did it end?” he asked.

“Good marriages can end,” she said. “I’m a perfect example of it. Look at my marriage.” Her words shocked her. Hot tears burned her eyes. Had her marriage ended? Was it over? She leaped to her feet. “We need to get going or we won’t make the end of the trail before dark.”

Randy stood up and suddenly wrapped his arms around her from behind. He pressed his cheek against her neck. He wasn’t going to let her go.

“Did they ever fight? Your parents.”

“No. At least I have no memory of them fighting.”

“But you know in your heart their marriage couldn’t have been good, don’t you?” Randy prodded. “Assuming a good marriage could fall apart, the father wouldn’t kidnap his daughter and never let the mother know where she was.”

“I know you’re right,” she said tiredly. “But I still don’t remember it being bad.”

“Why did he take Vanessa and not you?”

“Because she was his favorite.” The words slipped unexpectedly from her mouth, and before she could stop herself, she began crying in earnest. Pulling from his arms, she started walking across the rocks. She was relieved when Randy didn’t follow her.

Angel
. Vanessa had been her father’s favorite. Mellie’s too. Had she never realized that before, or had she simply never admitted it to herself?

The boulders dipped down to the water, and she picked her way among them, her vision blurred by tears. Randy caught up to her, helping her over a wide break in the rocks by taking her hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“He gave her presents,” Claire said. “Or when he’d have a gift for each of us, she’d get the better of the two. I pretended it didn’t bother me. If you’d asked me a few months ago, I would have denied that it bothered me at all. I don’t think I ever admitted it to myself until right now.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry.” She grinned sheepishly at him. “This is ridiculous—a forty-year-old woman crying over her daddy. Don’t listen to me.”